Max Verstappen secured pole position for the Formula 1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix at the Miami International Autodrome, continuing his strong qualifying form at the circuit. His performance put the Red Bull driver at the front of a starting grid that featured several unexpected results behind him.
Lando Norris will start alongside Verstappen on the front row in his McLaren. The second row sees Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli in third, achieving his highest grid slot of the season, directly ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in fourth. George Russell of Mercedes will line up fifth.
Further down the official starting grid, the Williams cars showed pace, with Carlos Sainz taking sixth and Alex Albon seventh. They both qualified ahead of the lead Ferrari of Charles Leclerc in eighth. Esteban Ocon put his Haas in ninth for the team’s home race, followed by Yuki Tsunoda rounding out the top 10 for Red Bull.
Seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton did not advance past the second qualifying session and will start the main race from 12th position. Pierre Gasly will begin the race from the pit lane after modifications to his Alpine car under Parc Ferme conditions following his 18th-place qualification.
Verstappen’s pole lap of 1 minute, 26.204 seconds narrowly beat Norris’s 1:26.269 and Antonelli’s 1:26.271. This qualifying result contrasted with the earlier Sprint race, where Verstappen finished 17th after a penalty for an unsafe release from his pit box resulted in a collision with Antonelli, and Norris took the win as Sprint race winner.
Reflecting on his lap that secured pole, Verstappen said he improved the car slightly, which helped with rotation. "Honestly, you know Q1, Q2, Q3 just improving every run, really, trying to find a bit more the limit," he stated after taking the Miami Grand Prix pole. He added about handling a mistake on his final lap, "You try to correct it and just floor it out of the corner."
Lando Norris acknowledged Verstappen's performance while expressing satisfaction with his own result. “Hat’s off to Max,” Norris said. “I was hoping he was going to slow down a little bit, but he clearly didn’t. So no, I’m happy with today. I’m happy with the progress I’ve been making with the car, with myself.”
Oscar Piastri, the current championship leader, expressed disappointment with his qualifying session, feeling he did not execute his Q3 laps properly. "This afternoon had nothing to do with luck," Piastri said. "It was not the level of execution I needed to have in Q3. Never a great thing when your best lap is your first lap of Q2. There was quite a bit left on the table with a few mistakes on both laps of Q3.”
Kimi Antonelli noted he struggled more in qualifying than in Sprint qualifying to get the tires in the optimal window for the whole lap but was "really happy with the result." Mercedes teammate George Russell commented on Antonelli's pace, saying, "Clearly, Kimi from that point this weekend has been really on it compared to the whole season. He’s been exceptionally fast. He’s doing an amazing job. Myself, I’ve taken a step backwards. What worked in the first five races did not work here in Miami.”
Looking ahead to the race, Charles Leclerc voiced concerns about Ferrari's performance relative to competitors. “We’re just not fast, whatever we do with the car," Leclerc said. "We can run it different ways. We just don’t have the downforce others have at the moment, especially at those speeds.”
